The WSTS forecast for 2012 has eroded continuously over the past four forecast cycles, although the industry's current malaise has been relatively simple to predict since 2009.

Other semiconductor market research firms have also recently reduced their forecasts, and have changed their growth outlooks for 2012 from positive to negative numbers.

In this video, recorded last December, I predicted that semiconductor revenues would decline by as much as 5% in 2012, a figure Objective Analysis derived using a methodology that I have explained in earlier posts of the Chip Talk Forbes blog. This approach allows us to provide our clients with the most consistently accurate forecasts in the semiconductor industry.

WSTS uses consensus forecasting, meaning that the organization votes on a forecast based on the individual forecasts of its member companies. Although there is merit to this approach, in this case it appears to have led many industry participants astray.